Help find this plane crash not listed on FAA

July 1, 2006 6:37 PM

Help me find a record/info of this air disaster: January 2/3 either '69 or '70 Peoria Illinois. Aircraft was a DC9 and company was possibly Ozark. Flight departed Chicago. A search of the FAA website reveals nothing! No google luck either.

My Dad was on this flight returning from visiting my grandparent/ his parents. As stated above the plane left Chicago, the plane made a landing at Peoria on ice where it spun and slid sideways along the ice. The landing gear wasn't built to take the stress of this and snapped causing the wing to dig into the ice and the front and back of the plane to detach from the centre (where my Dad was sitting). He believes there were no fatalities in the crash (mainly due to the pilot cutting all electrics).The plane was full of college students and the whole thing was treated very 'hush hush'.

It was one of the few plane to fly in the blizzard but the pilot insisted on flying.

The airline was handing out free drink prior to the flight.

There was small private craft that passengers of the craft were told had to land in Peoria before their plane could land and we're also curious what happened to that plane.

I'm currently flying with my Dad between Sydney and Incheon(Seoul), we're somewhere over the China sea, and the wonders of wireless and google can't help me find any record of this crash.... can mefi?

posted by mule to travel & transportation (13 comments total)

AirDisaster doesn't have any record of it. It has a couple of crashes on January 2/3 throughout the years, but the only crash in 69/70 was 1969 in China (at least, in their database). Also, it only has one Ozark air, and that crashed in July. It might have been very hush-hush, or it could just not be in their database.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:11 PM on July 1, 2006

Here's the NTSB database, but I couldn't find it with a quick search.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:20 PM on July 1, 2006

Here and here are the NTSB lists of all accident reports for January 1969 and 1970. There's nothing there that matches the description.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:32 PM on July 1, 2006

Closest I can find:
Here
posted by johnny7 at 7:33 PM on July 1, 2006

There's this accident from March, 1963, that was an Ozark plane and happened at Peoria, but that's the closest I can find.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:37 PM on July 1, 2006

One more try. This accident happened in Springfield, Illinois, to an Ozark plane that took off from Chicago.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:45 PM on July 1, 2006

Thanks for looking folks, but it's definitely not one of the above listed.
posted by mule at 7:55 PM on July 1, 2006

For what it's worth, I'll be in Peoria on Monday afternoon. I could stop by the downtown library and ask. Anyone think that would help?

(drop me an e-mail if so because I'll probably forget I offered otherwise)
posted by sbutler at 8:33 PM on July 1, 2006

sbutler, ask for local newspapers from the timeframe in question. Even if it was hush-hush, a local paper would have *something*, even just a mention in the police blotter section, which might give a flight number or some other bit of relevant data.

Was Peoria the plane's original destination? If so, were the students from Bradley University (link to their library's newspaper & periodical db)? Maybe an edition of student newspaper might have something?
posted by SuperSquirrel at 7:52 AM on July 2, 2006

Well... no good news to report. I looked through the Jan 1 - 8th papers for '68, '69, and '70. I read all the weather reports, and most were just for bitter cold and a slight chance of precipitation. No blizzard conditions were mentioned :(

The closest I could find was there was snow on Jan 6th of '69. 3" and the paper had a small bit about car accidents, but nothing about the airport.

The local paper, btw, is the Peoria Journal Star. The library has back issues on microfilm, but they haven't indexed back that far. So the search through the issues is a rather manual process.
posted by sbutler at 6:55 PM on July 3, 2006

Check with the local police for radio logs from that date. That's the best I got.
posted by Elvis at 12:07 PM on July 5, 2006

Thanks everyone!
Yes it was Bradley University. We'll have to follow up with there paper. I just spoke my my Dad's mother and she tells the story differently again (but wasn't there) which leaves me even more curious as to what happened.
posted by mule at 2:16 PM on July 5, 2006

I found airliners.net to be quite helpful with obscure questions like this one. the forums are pricey to register for but there usually is one odd old man with encyclopedic knowledge on any aviation-related issue.

I once got a detailed description on what made the 727 main landing gear doors so special. seriously, try them.
posted by krautland at 11:30 PM on August 18, 2006